Saed Hindash/The Star-LedgerPulitzer-winning author Toni Morrison receives a kiss from Newark Mayor Cory Booker, after he introduced her at a paid appearance at Rutgers-Newark tonight to address students. This comes less than three weeks before she is scheduled to speak at Rutgers' commencement.

NEWARK — Shortly after she took the stage at Rutgers-Newark tonight, Toni Morrison made the crowd gasp.

The Nobel- and Pulitzer Prize-winning author pulled out a stack of type-written pages and said she was going to read part of her new book, which is still a work-in-progress.

"Some of it is soooo good — and some of it needs editing," said Morrison, 80. "There is a point at which actually reading it aloud for an audience gives me something back that I can’t get just alone at a computer."

Then, Morrison began reading a vivid scene in which a young brother and sister watch both a pack of restless horses from a distance and a body being pulled from a wheelbarrow and buried on farmland in Georgia.

"They rose up like men. We saw them like men, they stood. We shouldn’t have been anywhere near that place," Morrison read.

The 20-minute surprise preview of Morrison’s next novel was part of a question-and-answer session for Rutgers’ "Writers at Newark" series. More than 600 people packed a room in the student center to hear her speak. Another 150 jammed into overflow rooms to hear a broadcast of the event.

In addition to students and professors, the crowd included Newark Mayor Cory Booker, poet Amiri Baraka and members of local book groups. Morrison’s son, Harold Ford, sat in the front row with a camera, alongside the author’s daughter-in-law and two young granddaughters.

Morrison’s appearance came less than three weeks before she is scheduled to deliver the commencement address before this year’s graduating class at Rutgers Stadium in Piscataway.

The novelist will be paid $30,000 for that speech, which campus officials said is half her usual speaking fee. Morrison’s check will come from a fund provided by Pepsi, which holds the vending machine contract at Rutgers.

For tonight’s 90-minute appearance at Rutgers-Newark, Morrison was paid a $2,000 honorarium, said Carla Capizzi, a university spokeswoman. Half the honorarium was paid by the university’s "Writers at Newark" program. The rest was paid by Rutgers’ Institute on Ethnicity, Culture and the Modern Experience.

Rutgers officials said it was a coincidence Morrison was booked to speak on two different Rutgers campuses within a few weeks of each other. Both bookings were made independently last summer.

Morrison, born Chloe Anthony Wofford, grew up in Ohio and published her first novel, "The Bluest Eye," in 1970. She went on to write "Song of Solomon," "Beloved" and other novels. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 and became the first African-American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. She currently serves as a professor emeritus at Princeton University.

Last night, Morrison was introduced by Booker, who said he read her novels while he was a student at Oxford in England. He called the novelist "one of my living heroes."

"Toni Morrison’s work breaks up the soil of the soul," Booker said. "It helps to open us to light, to heat, to nourishing rain. It helps us to grow."

Morrison, whose gray hair was tied back in a pink scarf, was brought on stage in a wheelchair and helped to her feet. She walked to a chair, where she read the excerpt from her novel and answered questions submitted by students.

When asked her advice for young writers, Morrison said good writing takes multiple drafts.

"If you don’t like to revise, you don’t like writing," she said. "Revision is writing."

The author answered questions about feminism, raising children and the nature of love. She also, reluctantly, gave her take on President Obama, whom she endorsed in the last election.

"I have a deep, deep respect (and) admiration for him. I really do," Morrison said, crediting the president with a wisdom beyond his years.